AFE was identified as the leading cause of direct maternal death, accounting for nine deaths.

AFE occurs during pregnancy, most often before, during or shortly after delivery and during both vaginal and cesarean births.

Professor Leonie Callaway, the Queensland representative for Australasian Maternity Outcomes Surveillance System and a senior staff specialist at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, said it was difficult for researchers to get funding to investigate AFE because it was so rare.

"If you think about heart attacks in men, there's a foundation, bucket loads of money and every time someone does economic analysis of heart disease it attracts a huge amount of funding," she said.

"If you look at some of these catastrophic pregnancy conditions... there's not been a single new drug to treat in the last however many years.

"Overall, research into severe events in pregnancy could do with a little more attention."